


moonrise, midnight, moonset

by That_Ghost_Kristoff, TheElusiveBadger



Series: into the desert [11]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka Tano Didn't Leave the Jedi Order, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Gen, Miscommunication, Padmé Amidala Lives, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Tatooine Slave Culture (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29841273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Ghost_Kristoff/pseuds/That_Ghost_Kristoff, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheElusiveBadger/pseuds/TheElusiveBadger
Summary: After the rise of the Empire and the separation from Leia, Padmé, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka wait out their first night on Tatooine sitting vigil at Anakin's bedside, leaving Owen and Beru to navigate their way around the situation.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Owen Lars/Beru Whitesun, Padmé Amidala & Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Series: into the desert [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2135958
Comments: 15
Kudos: 102





	moonrise, midnight, moonset

Six days after Ahsoka wakes under the rubble of the Jedi Temple’s collapsed roof, she finds herself sitting on an uncomfortable metal chair in an uncomfortable dining area in an unfamiliar farm on Tatooine. More than once, over the past four years, Anakin called the desert cold at night, but with the last of the first sun’s light still burning bronze over the horizon’s dunes, she melts from the daytime heat.  _ Force _ , she thinks as she stares down, unseeing, into her smoothie of—well,  _ something’s  _ blood,  _ so this is going to be my life now.  _

She’s not alone in the kitchen, though aloneness is all she wants; Anakin’s stepfamily sit across the table from her, a married pair matching with the weathering around their eyes and mouths and cracking lines on their hands leftover from exposure to the sun and heat and poverty. After four years of war, she recognises the look. Blonde, too, she registered distantly when they first met. Anakin’s blonde, the same dark gold as the dunes at sunset, she learned just now. Like the rest of them, the two are tired, their long-standing exhausting radiating from them. She registers all of this about them because it’s easier to focus on strangers than the flashes she sees between blinks of mangled troopers’ bodies or Master Che’s contorted corpse or Anakin, chalk-faced and barely breathing on the narrow starship cot.

Though Ahsoka and the couple wait together, and though the woman, whose name she thinks is Beru, brought her the smoothie, they haven’t spoken much beyond basic dull pleasantries. Eventually, the woman says, “Sorry, we don’t have anything—” She looks right towards her husband with that not-quite-smile where her teeth are grit and her mouth twists. “Well, we haven’t gotten to the butchers in a while.” Her right hand closed over her left wrist awhile ago, circling it. 

“Don’t have the funds,” her husband says in a low voice, almost as if he’s talking into his glass. It’s blue milk. According to Anakin, they drink a lot of blue milk on Tatooine. 

Not that she heard that from Anakin on the way here. On the way here, on the way from the impersonal medical spacestation Senator Organa found on Polis Massa, Anakin hadn’t regained consciousness. Now he still hasn’t, so Ahsoka has to wait, just like the rest, for him to wake. If he wakes. When. Master Obi-Wan and Padmé are with him in the moisture farm’s spare bedroom, so Ahsoka is here, with the family, who she doesn’t know and doubt even Anakin knows, because it felt too intrusive to be with the others. She’s his sister, she thinks, in an abstract way that she doesn’t entirely understand, but the rest of them are—something else. 

There’s a plate of blue milk cheese on the table, and a stack of flatbread that Ahsoka can’t eat, normally, but she’s not consumed anything since the unidentified rodent a droid gifted her on the spacestation and half a ration bar. Ten minutes before, Beru knocked on the spare room’s door and asked the three of them if they’d like to come into the dining room for a light supper. Though Padmé and Obi-Wan also haven’t eaten since before they’d arrived at the moisture farm, they declined the offer. Someone, they said, had to stay with “Ani,” and both had been too reluctant to leave, but Beru explained about household rules involving food consumption outside the dining room, which was inadvisable because of “the spiders.” Ahsoka didn’t understand what spiders she meant, but Padmé shuddered with a haunted look at the mention of them and Ma—Obi-Wan, if possible, paled.

En-route here, they all said very little, but not long before they dropped from hyperspace, he turned to Ahsoka and said, “There’s no need for you to call me Master anymore, young one. There’s not much point now.”  _ Because the Order is gone, _ he meant, though thankfully, he kept that thought to himself.

If there was more to it than that, which she suspects, he kept the secondary reason to himself, too.

Ahsoka’s stomach hurts from hunger and anxiety; she can’t do much about the latter, but for the former, well. Maybe it’s worth it to snatch a flatbread and dip it into the blood. Her digestion won’t like it, even with the addition of animal protein, but the resulting discomfort is something better to think on than the state of Anakin’s maybe-unwakefulness, Padmé’s acute grief, Baby Luke’s fussing, and Ahsoka and Obi-Wan’s own ill-tended injuries. Under the tunic she borrowed from the med centre and a roll of bandages, a blaster wound smarts. As if in agreement, her stomach grumbles. Again, Beru glances at Owen, who this time glances back, as Ahsoka bites her lip and seizes the top bread from the stack. It’s warm to the touch. Maybe here on Tatooine, food never really loses its heat. 

Embarrassed, she dunks it into the smoothie and holds it there, so the yellow bread sops into the red liquid to form a sickly congealed, unpleasant mess as she says, “It’s fine. It’s not like we warned you we were coming. Thanks for letting us stay, by the way. It’s really great.” 

She forces a smile, and takes a bite to avoid holding the expression. Her canines sink too fast and too hard through the mushy bread so they knock into her bottom teeth, and pointedly ignores the equally pointed look Anakin’s family share. Copper sunlight burnishes the centre of the table in a single thick line, alighting on the breads and glinting on the metal surface, so the paler shapes on the ceiling glow and grey shadows slant over Beru and Owen’s faces.

After a moment, he clears his throat, and raises his brows towards his hairline. “He’s kin,” the man says, as if that’s all there is to say. Ahsoka understands that about as much as she understood the strength of Bo-Katan’s need to avenge her sister’s death, which was so frenzied it drove her past logic; Ahsoka’s only family is the Jedi. The Jedi, who are gone. All except her and Obi-Wan and Anakin—

Anakin.

Right now, the only known Jedi left are her and M—Obi-Wan and Master Yoda and also Anakin, because they all had to feel the others  _ die,  _ but there might not be any more Anakin after tonight, or tomorrow night, or the night after that. Today marks six days since she arrived back at the Temple with Maul just to have their own troopers turn on them, and shoot to kill. For the past four, they’ve had Anakin on IV drips for food and water, but there’s nothing, said the medical droids on Polis Massa, medically wrong with him. He should be healthy. He  _ is  _ healthy. He’s just also not awake.

Six days ago, he accidentally collapsed the Temple. Somehow, he walked away from resurrection with no real side-effects, but not this. He hadn’t walked away from this. 

Obi-Wan suspects it was because of what happened with the Jedi at the same time. He said that in the medical facility, when they realised Anakin wasn’t going to miraculously wake. He didn’t say that it was because almost everyone they had ever known had just died, murdered by people they trusted, but that was the implication. It’s Anakin’s connection to the Force that did it. The same connection that allowed him to walk away from resurrection with no real side-effects.

Just a year ago, Ahsoka reminded him that she would never be able to return the favour. Of course, that hadn’t made him any more careful.

Since his birth, Baby Luke’s done nothing but cry when he’s not sleeping or eating, as if he knows that he’s entered the world after it already fell apart. Padmé’s face is thinner than normal from lack of sleep, and endless worry, while Mas—Obi-Wan’s on edge, his beard and hair unkempt. Ahsoka’s hands continue to shake every time she touches her lightsabers, when she wants to remind herself that they’re there.  _ That she survived _ , when so many had died. 

For the second time, Owen clears his throat, the sound wet, jarring her from her thoughts. “What did you do?” he asks.

“Excuse me?” she says, gaze jerking from her smoothie to settle on his face, on his frown, bracketing in deep lines, and the deeper creases between his brows. The thick column of rusted gold on the table is narrower now, the room’s entrance feathered with dusk’s odd periwinkle light, so the shadows are darker, which only serves to highlight the wrinkles. “What did  _ we _ —”

“No, no,” his wife says quickly, arms raised in a mock surrender, her face bleached of colour and pale eyes wide. “He just means, what happened? We only heard that the Jedi were being blamed for the attempted assassination of the Ch—the Emperor.”

Ahsoka adjusts herself in her metal chair, so she focuses on the couple more directly. “What?” she says, trying and failing to wrap her head around  _ Jedi  _ and  _ blamed. _ She knew about Palpatine declaring himself Emperor, but this is new. “When did you hear that?”

“Last night,” Owen replies, his tone just as gruff as it’s been all day, like he’s got sand grating in his throat. “Got home and there was Benobi. It’s all very confusing.” 

“Benobi?” she repeats, then shakes her head. “Wait, has anyone told you who  _ I  _ am?”

“No,” his wife answers as they both stare at her, expressions halfway between curious and suspicious. His arms are crossed, fingers gripping into his upper arms so his dusty shirt bunches beneath them, while hers are hidden under the table, presumably folded in her lap.

Unnerved, Ahsoka says, “Oh. Well, I’m Ahsoka Tano. Anakin’s padawan—his student. Or apprentice, I guess. It’s a Jedi thing. Was a Jedi thing.” 

“What?” Beru says, surprised, sharing yet another look with her husband and interrupting Ahsoka before she can continue. “Anakin was allowed to teach?” 

“Well, yeah,” she says, resigned, because it’s far from the first time, especially lately, that someone looked between the two of them and questioned how someone  _ so young  _ was in the position to take on a padawan. She takes a deep breath, shuts her eyes briefly, and when she opens them again, continues, “The Jedi never would’ve tried to assassinate anyone. I know what people are saying lately, but I swear. It’s against the Code. But I wasn’t on Coruscant until everything happened—the Temple, uh, collapse, I mean. And our troops turning against us. That ‘everything.’ I was on Mandalore before that. Breaking up a siege. I brought in Darth Maul in like I was supposed to and then just. Yeah.” To her soaked bread, she adds, “I bet he escaped, that fucker,” before taking another bite. It’s repulsive, but at least it’s food.

Slowly, Owen’s his brows inch further upward into his greying hair. Then, he nods tersely, his jaw clenched, and there’s an endless pause, where Beru fiddles with her braid, eyes flitting to look at anything but Ahsoka, before, he says, “You might as well have been speaking Bocce to us, right now, for all that you just made any lick of sense.” 

“Oh” is all Ahsoka says, because really, she’s too exhausted to think of where to start in a clearer explanation. It’s hard to hold onto the story herself, tired as she is—there was Yerbana and the call from Bo-Katan, the badly organised siege of Mandalore,  _ Maul. _ Coming home. Losing her home. Then this. Everything between the events are just details.

“Was Anakin around the Temple collapse?” Beru asks. 

“Yeah,” Ahsoka answers, shifting again to sit straighter, to concentrate. “He, uh. Well.” She pauses, contemplates her word choice, and says, “How much do you guys know about the Force?” Usually very little, she knows, especially all the way out here, but it seems polite to ask.

“That the witch stuff Mom said Ani could do?” Owen asks, with an emphasis on  _ witch stuff  _ that she doesn’t appreciate. 

“His mom called him a witch?” she says, dubious.

“Yes?” Beru says, like a question, as if she doesn’t understand the offense behind being called a witch. Ahsoka remembers being in the Temple as a youngling and hearing about the Dark Side users, the Nightsisters, from Master Yoda. The methods they’d used in the Force tainted it, perverted the Living Force from something sacred to something vile, he said. But then again, Anakin used resurrection on the unnamed planet, used resurrection to resurrect her, specifically, which is, according to Master Yoda, a power of the Dark Nightsisters. 

By now, she doesn’t know what to believe.

Quickly, Beru adds, “But not a bad one. A good witch,” which, again, rips Ahsoka from her musings. 

I’m too tired for this, she thinks, but says instead, “No, he’s not a witch. Those live on Dathomir. But anyway, the Force—” She breaks into a general explanation of the Force reserved for non-Jedi, which is the concept in its most basic form, and finishes with lifting the flatbreads from the plate to hover in line with Owen’s chin. “Like this. The Force.”

“So,” he says flatly, eyes following the food as it hovers. “Witch stuff.”

Sighing loudly, dramatically, she says, “Fine. Witch stuff,” and lets the flatbreads land back on the plate with a resounding clatter. “So we’re a bunch of witches, I guess. Whatever. It’s not like our Order isn’t all dead.”

Expression softening, Beru nods. “And this Dark Maul?” she says. “Will he be a threat? Is he looking for you?” She tugs on her braid, then smoothes her hand over it again. With the sunlight just a shimmer and the dusk crept in, the yellow in her hair is gone. 

“I doubt it,” Ahsoka says. She consciously decides not to correct the other woman’s mistake, just as she consciously decided not to tell her husband that it’s a K, not a B in Obi-Wan’s name. “He didn’t care about me. He cared more about—well, it doesn’t matter. But yeah. So the Force. And the collapse. We were there. Me and Anakin. Not any of the others. Obi-Wan was on Utapau and Padmé was in her apartment, I think.” It’s Anakin who Maul cared about. In the end, it’s always been Anakin.

“And where does the baby come in?” Beru asks, and then Owen interrupts, stating, “Benobi said he’s Anakin’s,” in a tone that implies Baby Luke’s parentage is unexpected. 

Ahsoka, to her own surprise, laughs. “Yeah, like he could be  _ anyone  _ else’s,” she says as she wraps her hands around the smoothie. “Seriously, everyone knew they were a thing even before her mom told Obi-Wan that they were a thing. I guess the baby came in seven months ago? That’s the normal pregnancy for a human, right? Poor kid. His birthday’s just after all this.”

“I doubt the kid cares,” Owen says, before he looks to his wife, who looks back in a glance just as pointed as the others. Clearly, they’ve mastered the art of eye contact conversation, the same one Anakin has with both Padmé and with Obi-Wan, which is just unfair. “So, Padmé’s  _ mother’s  _ involved? Why would she tell  _ Benobi _ ? Shouldn’t she know about secrecy?” 

It’s not Ahsoka’s story to tell, so she says, “Well, yeah, but it was kind of important that he knew at the time. It’s a long story.” She doesn’t know the whole of it, personally, but she knows that Jobal Naberrie and Obi-Wan talk, if only because she once answered his comlink for him and it was Padmé’s mother on the other end.

Owen leans forward, and his left elbow hits his cup of half-empty blue milk, which skits across the table to knock into the plate of flatbread, but with an automatic flick of her hand, Ahsoka keeps it from spilling. With a curse, he tugs it back towards him, and says to the table, “Everything’s a long st—” 

Beru holds her hand up, cutting off her husband’s commentary, much to Ahsoka’s relief. “How did the Temple collapse? Is this where Anakin was injured? How did you get out and get all the way here? Luke is too young to travel like this.” 

“We didn’t really have a choice,” Ahsoka says. “It’s not like the Chancellor wasn’t going to find out about Polis Massa eventually. It was tied to Senator Organa. He’s the one who found us. I don’t know how. I guess it’s where Anakin got hurt? Honestly, I don’t really know.” 

To a Jedi, maybe, she could explain about the columns crumbling and then the ceiling cracking open and the floors shattering until they all went down and down and down into themselves, finishing the work the civilian bomber started during their first month in the Outer Rim, but she can’t to two moisture farmers from Tatooine who think their brother is a good witch. Even on a planet like Tatooine, adults, she thinks, should be too old for fairy tales.

With a groan, Owen brings his hands to his face to drag from his eyes down his cheeks, and mutters something too low for even Ahsoka’s hearing to catch. Beru’s eyelashes flutter faster than an Alderaanian lichenfly, and then she says, “Polis Massa?” 

“The medical facility,” Ahsoka says, “where the twins were born.”

Owen’s hands slam against the table with a resounding thump, so her smoothie tips, the swirled, viscid blood spilling along the cracks in the clay top to seep over the sand-dusted ground. “The  _ twins? _ ” he says in a loud voice, so loud that it might trigger Baby Luke into another fit, if Padmé and Obi-Wan are that unlucky. “There were twins?”

Beru gapes, and in a sad voice, she says, “Did the baby get a proper burial? I hope the wee one’s not trapped in the winds.” Her right hand covers her mouth, and her shoulders round. With a scrape, Owen’s chair shifts closer to hers, and he reaches out to her, his own hand disappearing underneath the table. 

“Uh, no,” Ahsoka says, and glances at her lap, where the blood trickles off the table’s edge to land on her borrowed, poorly-fitting sleeping pants. “It’s weird? Somehow someone decided they’d be split up or something, I guess, so Senator Organa took Leia because his wife’s always wanted a girl, apparently, so we still have little Luke, and Anakin’s going to be so pissed. Obi-Wan’s really pissed. I think Padmé is, but I don’t know. I’m assuming.” She and Obi-Wan missed most of it, both too preoccupied where they were at the time, sitting vigil at Anakin’s bedside, willing him to wake. What she doesn’t mention is that Master Yoda also highly recommended that they separate, too, she and Obi-Wan and Anakin, from each other and from the separated twins, and so they all agreed but here they are anyway. Rather than say any of this, she asks instead, “Do you have a towel, maybe, or something?”

“What do you mean his wife’s always  _ wanted  _ a girl?” Owen asks, his right fist clenched. 

“Yeah?” she says, tension leaving her back so she slides deeper against the chair. The blood makes the wet fabric squeak on the metal. “They can’t have kids. They must’ve been trying to adopt for ages or it would’ve been suspicious.”

“A senator’s wife?” Beru says, eyes wide and glistening, catching the filtered dusk light, which seeps through the front half of the room now that the last of the sunlight faded. She blinks, and then looks away from Ahsoka, before she continues, “They’re trying to adopt? They didn’t—they didn’t try to get treatments? Fertility treatments?” 

“Guess they didn’t take?” she says. “Maybe? I don’t know, I’ve met Senator Organa like three times. It didn’t really come up in conversation. I  _ think  _ she’s the Queen of Alderaan, though. Or something.”

Reddening all the way to his ears, Owen says, “Oh, so royalty’s just going to take other people’s babies. Of course.” 

“I mean,” she says, uncomfortable, “I don’t actually think it was the Senator’s idea. I really don’t know what happened. I was pretty messed up.”

Though Owen goes to speak, his wife cuts in once again, turning back to meet Ahsoka’s gaze. “What are you planning to do now? How did you end up here?”

“I don’t know,” Ahsoka says again. “We just needed somewhere to go where the Chancellor wouldn’t look and he’s got to know Anakin’s feelings about Tatooine, they said, and Padmé knew how to get here, so here we are. After Anakin wakes up? No idea.”

“Do you think the Empire will come looking for him?” Beru asks.

“Probably not,” Ahsoka says, falling back into the rhythm of answering without paying much consideration to her actual words. “They think we’re dead. We think. Everyone else is and with the Temple—the destruction was pretty bad. We shouldn’t have made it.” Rex didn’t. They ripped the inhibitor chip from Rex in the Halls of Healing, ignoring Master Che’s body like it wasn’t there, and then he died beneath the rubble.

“What about Padmé?” the other woman says, forehead knitting. “She’s not a Jedi. Won’t a senator be missed? And are you sure that they think all of you are dead?” 

With a nod, Ahsoka says, “Her, definitely. There’s a way they’re going to fake a funeral and everything. Senator Organa said so. So you don’t need to worry. And Obi-Wan heard Co—the person trying to kill him say he was dead, so. It’s how he got off Utapau.”

“And Anakin was on Coruscant?” Owen says. “So,  _ Benobi  _ left him there alone.” His words are tense, and his jaw clenches so hard he might chip a tooth. 

“Yeah?”

Owen’s chair scraps against the floor as he abruptly gets up. “I’m going for a walk,” he says in a mutter, then he stalks from the dining room and out into the darkened courtyard, leaving Ahsoka and Beru alone in the resulting silence. Even dusk’s light’s given way to the clear-cut silver of moonshine; now, it’s officially night.

“I’ll get you a rag,” Beru says, sighing, and retreats down the stairs to retrieve it, her arms across her middle. 

  
  


Just past midnight, Owen enters the unlit dining room again to discover Benobi slumped in the chair the girl occupied earlier, staring down into a mug of still-steaming caf. He hadn’t bothered to power on the glowpanels that line the ground, so all he has to illuminate him is the moonlight slanting through the open entrance. As Owen, cautiously, approaches to sit without touching the wall-switch either, the Jedi says, “Thank you,” and sluggishly raises his head from the drink, “for allowing us to intrude upon your hospitality without warning.” 

Wondering whether Beru gave him the cup or if Benobi helped himself, Owen says, “You were already at the doorstep.” With a glare, he sits, deliberately placing his hammer on the tabletop so the metal head dully reflects the white light, and continues, “And with Anakin injured and a baby, what else were we going to do?” 

The Jedi droops, lilting sideways as he leans his elbow on the table’s edge to rest his cheek in his palm. “Yes,” he says, without looking away from the steam, “that is true, I suppose.”

_ He supposes _ , Owen thinks, and absently strokes the hammer’s handle with his thumb. There’s still a bit of dried blood clinging to the wood from a spider he’d dispatched two nights before and dried blood from the Togruta’s spilled drink staining a circle beside Benobi’s resting arm. “Girl told us a bit about what happened,” Owen says. “Said you weren’t around when it happened. Something about Utapau.”

With a single-bobbing nod, the man answers, “I never made it to Coruscant. By the time I reached them, Padmé was in labour and Ani was—well, Ani.”

The name hits Owen as an electric shock.  _ Ani, _ he thinks.  _ He’s calling him _ Ani. That was Shmi’s name for him. Family’s name. When he heard the rich woman—Padmé—call him that four years ago on the morning Anakin brought their mother back only for her to die, he felt the same as he does now.  _ She cares for him though,  _ Owen reminds himself.  _ She loves him. _

“Yeah. You hoping he’ll wake up?” he asks, testing how to attack the conversation with Benobi. He knows he can’t buy his stepbrother’s freedom, not with the limited profit the farm managed after the last few seasons, but the girl and Padmé implied that Jedi were supposed to be  _ compassionate _ , and Owen will never forgive himself if he doesn’t try.

“It’s not hope,” the other man says, finally meeting Owen’s stare with a glare that rivals his own. In just the moonlight alone, the Jedi’s colourless. It fits him, given what he is and what he does. Still, he says, “Anakin will wake. He’s survived much worse.”

According to the girl, Anakin’s on a feeding tube because a building collapsed around them. From what Owen’s seen from victims of cavern or cave collapses here, he can guess that his stepbrother has at least a few internal injuries, just like he can guess that there was very little medical care on the way here. If he’s survived worse—well, Owen thinks, and strokes the hammer again, maybe no one will notice one more dead Jedi? And the woodoos and womprats take care of unwanted remains even faster than the winds. 

Muscles tense and posture rigid, Owen says, “Sounds like you’re not taking good care of him,” as his nail snicks on the hammer’s head. 

“I was trying,” Benobi says, spine snapping straight as he looks Owen fully in the eye. His are bloodshot and blackened from exhaustion. “We’ve been fighting a war.”

“Yeah,” Owen says in congenial agreement, because he’s read the papers and heard the rumours. The Republic and their war, fought with a mass produced slave army, covered up with propaganda that told worried mothers and fathers that at least it wasn’t their children paying the price. He narrows his eyes as he adds, “With children on the frontlines.” 

“Not the Republic’s finest moment,” the man says, mouth thinning. “Not to say that it’s had many of those these past fourteen years.”

Though Owen doesn’t want to agree with Benobi, that’s not wrong. “My mother would have liked to know how her son was doing,” he says instead, and grips the hammer’s handle tightly in between three fingers. “Your people didn’t give her that opportunity.” He spits out  _ your people _ as viciously as he can manage, but the man is frustratingly unphased.

“She tried?” he says, as though he didn’t know. “No Jedi is allowed contact with their family. I would have thought that M—or not.” Sighing, he says, “Anakin will wake. Soon, is what we hope. Our medical supplies are limited. We can leave then, so you may return to your lives, but I must request, for all of our safety, that you never speak of our visit to anyone.”

“We’re Tatooinians,” Owen says, bristling, and adds, “We know about secrecy. _You_ can leave if you want. The girl, too. But allow Anakin to stay here with his family. He’s fought in your war, hasn’t he earned it?” 

The man stills, and stares at him through the black shadows for a long, long moment with his colourless eyes, before he says, “He certainly has earned his family, but all that means is that I’m not leaving him.” He’s not changed his posture, nor moved a hand nor raised his voice, but there’s something in his tone that leaves Owen with a chill. 

Angrily, he grips the hammer tighter. The audacity, the arrogance, the sheer fucking gall of slavers to consider themselves  _ family, _ then attempt to intimidate the real family just for caring. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says, “under the circumstances.” 

“The circumstances,” Benobi repeats, letting his hand drop so his palm hits against the table’s surface. “He’s dying and I can’t do anything about it, and when he lives, he’ll—no, I’m not going anywhere, if you insist he stays, nor is Ahsoka.”

Just as Owen goes to say that most slavers would cut their losses, Beru clears her throat. He cranes his neck and sees her in the doorway, her arms crossed and her head tilted, backlit by the moonlight. “Everything all right in here?” she asks, but she’s looking straight at him and not the intruder in their dining room. 

“We’re fine, madam,” the other man says, turning his gaze from Owen to Beru with a smile that would be charming, if it came from anyone else. “I was thanking your husband for all your hospitality and recommending that we can leave when Anakin is well again.”

Beru quirks a brow and enters the dining room, flicking the wall-switch so the glowpanel’s power on, temporarily blinding him. As she slides into the chair beside him, she says, “I doubt that’s what he meant, General Kenobi. My husband—he speaks without fully thinking things through.” 

“I know what I’m saying,” Owen says, grumbling, back to his wife. “You don’t know everything, Beru. I was just saying that he and the girl can leave, but Anakin has more than earned his right to stay with his family. Because of his service. If this man would be so inclined.” 

“We are  _ not _ leaving them,” Benobi says, as a statement, so there’s no room for argument. He shouldn’t have a say, he shouldn’t have the  _ right  _ to a say, but unfortunately, he does. There’s not much Owen and Beru can do if Benobi refuses to release Anakin. Not when they can’t pay, and not when they don’t have the means to remove the chip from his neck before the man activates the detonator. 

“Well,” Owen says, “you left him when you went to Utapau. You don’t seem to have much of a problem with it.” Though he knows it’s not unusual for slavers to leave their slaves for a day or two, the papers reported that Benobi dragged Anakin around with him everywhere during that sarlaac-spawned war. 

“That was not my choice,” the other man says, fingers drumming once on the tabletop. He doesn’t have much more colour under the glowpanel’s intense artificial illumination than he had under the shadows and the moonlight. “Anakin was on special assignment at the time and I was charged with running a campaign against General Grievous.”

Though Owen cares as much about General Grieves as he does about a womprat’s decayed remains, and he doesn’t appreciate the implication behind  _ special assignment,  _ Beru’s warning clasp of her hands in front of her on the table stops him from telling Benobi exactly what he thinks about his organisation. Instead, she says, “Clearly,” in that soothing voice she uses to coax sand cats or dune martens out from underneath the vaporators, “we’re all tired right now. General Kenobi, my husband and I cared for Anakin’s mother very much. She was our family. Our biggest concern is making sure that her son, grandson, and the mother are well and cared for. Do you even have anywhere else to go?” 

Again, the man waits a second before he says, “No, I suppose we don’t. Mandalore, perhaps, though the current leader’s feelings on me are...tepid at best—” Owen agrees with the unknown Mandalorian leader on that. “—There’s also the matter of travel papers. We would need to solve that before we can even think of leaving the planet with a newborn. A smuggler wouldn’t do. They’d be as likely to sell us to the new Empire as they would be to bring as to Mandalore. Or elsewhere.”

“My family can help with papers,” Beru says, though she’s being far too nice to this man. “But you can stay. You and Ahsoka.”

“Can your family acquire freedom papers?” he asks, angling towards her, more focused now than he was on Owen. “We would have lost Anakin’s along with the Temple. I have his chip number memorised. I know a false name won’t change the necessity of that. I wouldn’t want to risk anyone catching him on a scanner and mistaking him as a runaway.”

Caught in-between shock and his own internal rambling on the man that’s defined the last four years of his life, Owen only faintly hears his wife reply, “Of course. It’s their speciality.” He runs through every rumor, interaction, and hearsay he’s heard concerning this man. The cantina patrons implied Ben—Kenobi?—no. They implied that he’d paid Jabba for Anakin, but if that was for  _ freedom  _ papers, well, then perhaps Owen just put his foot in his mouth. Again, he grits his teeth, his fingers numb as he pulls the hammer off of the table to rest on his lap, hiding his shame from view. 

“They’ve been doing it a long time,” he says, without missing a beat, determined to move on from this conversation as if nothing had occurred. Fine, he thinks. So Benobi and the girl can stay with Anakin and his family after all. “We wouldn’t mind the extra help around the moisture farm,” he adds, which is not, and never will be, untrue. It would also mean they could relieve their nephew Liddle, which is no great loss. “If you really want to stay. And it ain’t safe to travel with a newborn. Kid’ll pick up all sorts of diseases.” 

“That was a fear,” the other man says. “It’s why we decided to come here rather than deliberate. We will contribute, of course, to the labour. We would never expect to stay without offering our services in return. Anakin’s a wonderful mechanic. Ahsoka isn’t so bad herself.”

“We’re aware of Anakin,” Beru says with a laugh. “Last time he was here he fixed up everything we own.” 

With half a smile, he says, “That does sound like him. Thank you for your help, and your continued hospitality, but I think I should be getting back.” Then, without waiting for a response, he drains his caf in one long drink, and walks out into the night, leaving his cloak behind him.

  
  


There’s a window in the spare room’s ceiling that reveals a cut-out square of the sky, situated right in the centre of the mural of brown-and-tan geometric shapes. It’s just at the start of false dawn, just at the end of the multi-hour silence, when Ahsoka asks, “Do you think Beru and Owen will be okay with Baby Luke?” in a hardly audible murmur made more indistinct from the angle of her head against the insubstantial mattress. “Owen doesn’t really seem the paternal type, you know?”

Padmé can’t say she thought much about the Lars’ parental skills at any point over the last day or the previous time she’d spent the night at this particular homestead. Truthfully, their characters hadn’t been much on her mind then, nor any point during the war, since she’d never thought about trying to coax Ani into cultivating a relationship with his mother’s family. “It’s just for us to catch up on sleep,” she says, though she hasn’t really slept more than thirty minutes at a time in the past four days, woken periodically from worry and nightmares and guilt and her son’s, but not her daughter’s, need to eat. Ahsoka hasn’t been much better and to her knowledge, Obi-Wan hasn’t slept at all. “Artoo’s with them. If there’s any trouble, he’ll let us know. And Owen’s not signing adoption papers,” she continues, bitter as she thinks about Bail and Leia and how Breha  _ always wanted a daughter _ and where her baby girl is now. Maybe in Alderaan’s palace already, she thinks, squirrelled away in some secret room until the Organas deem it safe to reveal her.

With the same fervent dedication he’s shown for days, Obi-Wan says, “We’ll sleep when Anakin wakes,” without diverting his attention from Ani’s prone body, his tone halfway between dead and desperate. He sits in the lone chair parallel to Padmé’s ankles, but he’s not looked at her more than once or twice in hours. Neither has Ahsoka, who’s curled on the floor beside him to lean against the bed.

Miserably, Padmé says, “ _ If  _ he wakes.” She’s lost hope more and more each day, since Anakin hasn’t shown signs of waking since she arrived on Polis Massa. She arrived there after Anakin and Ahsoka and Bail, who comm’d her from the ruins of the Temple with coordinates and nothing else. Her memory of the night is sporadic at best. It was all normal at first, until the crash of the Temple’s roof falling rocked Galactic City and her comlink beeped, shrill from alarm. It’s the rest that’s a spotty mess—she and Dormé dragging clothes from the closet, gowns and sleeping clothes and travelling attire to stuff them into a bag—the sound of her own voice calling through the apartment for her handmaiden. It was her friend’s body hauled onto the ship, not the clothes, after the blaster bolts shot through the flat and over the landing platform as they escaped. Then came Bail and the comm. Ahsoka, wailing. The coordinates. Bail saying, “Alone, Padmé. I’ve got them.” 

He hadn’t specified who he meant by “them.” Ahsoka, clearly, and Ani, Padmé assumed. At the time, she also assumed Obi-Wan. On Polis Massa, until Bail said he was coming from Utapau, that he was still stuck there when the clones, apparently, turned on the Jedi, she thought that he must be dead.

But he’s here, and so is Ahsoka, and so is Padmé. So is Ani, for all that his current state counts. Under the false dawn’s ashen light, his skin has the pallour of flimsi, except where the bruises blotch his right cheekbone and again on his neck and the dark blushing red of his scar. Even his lips are bloodless.

As she takes all this in, she says, “He might not. I don’t kn—Goddess, what am I going to do now?” 

“He will,” Ahsoka says, as fervently dedicated as Obi-Wan, because they’re Jedi, of course, and to them, that means they just  _ fucking know  _ these things. “Skyguy’s not going to just die on us like this, on Tatooine _. _ ”

“At least he’ll be buried with his mother,” Padmé says, as she thinks about her own mother, who used to tell her that she wanted her daughters to scatter her ashes in the lake country. Parents shouldn’t outlive their children, but now her mother and her grandmother have to prepare Dormé’s body for Padmé’s burial. When Obi-Wan burned her handmaiden’s face—well, the sound and the smell aren’t anything she will forget soon. Mechanically, she adds, “He’s missed her terribly.” 

“Then he’ll be alive to honour her,” Obi-Wan says, like the Jedi have any concept of honouring the dead, as he leans forward, elbows on his knees and palms pressed together in front of his mouth. “Ani isn’t dying on us tonight.”

Padmé sighs, heavily, and rubs her tired eyes. She’d never considered that the Jedi would stubbornly stand on hope and deny the harsh reality unfolding in front of them.  _ He’s not moved _ , she thinks _ , in four days. He hasn’t even uttered a sound. He missed our children’s births and he missed the medical droids frantically trying to save my life. What if our children had lost the both of us _ ? It was too terrible to contemplate, but the more she tried to push the thoughts away, the more they crept in and threatened to stay.

“Even if it’s not tonight,” she says, “it could be tomorrow. Or the next day. And we don’t even know where we are going to go that’s away from Palpatine’s eyes. Not to mention Luke.” 

For a long while, neither Obi-Wan nor Ahsoka answer. Then she says, “What about Mandalore?” and raises her head from the pillow of her arms to glance from him to Padmé. “I mean, Bo-Katan kind of owes me a favour.”

“We can stay here,” Obi-Wan says, though unhappily. “Anakin’s family told me directly after—some discussion. His sister-in-law’s family will be able to acquire the proper documentation for us. Regardless of whether we stay or go, and whether or not he—” he adds, then falters, eyes flitting to Padmé. “We won’t leave you and Luke to fend for yourselves. You needn’t worry about that.”

Though logically, she knows she should feel some relief at his words, they are a cold comfort. More than anything, Padmé needs her husband, and the longer he’s asleep, the more she believes that she’ll never see him again. On the back of the dissolution of the Senate, the loss of her daughter to Bail and Breha because the all-knowing Yoda manipulated her into agreeing that it was “safer for the twins to be apart,” due to their “strength in the Force.” Padme doesn’t want the kindness of strangers, nor even Obi-Wan’s, who for years she’s considered a close friend and the closest thing she has to a father-in-law. Instead, she wants to scream. She would like her own apartment in Coruscant, but more than that she wants Varykino, the lakeside estate where Luke and Leia should have spent their first nights with Ani, alive and well and happy, by her side. 

She wishes they’d never entered into this pointless war. 

“Thank you,” she says, numb. “What types of papers can they acquire for us?” 

“Travel documents,” Obi-Wan says, sagging low against the back of the chair as he folds his arms, “proving our identities. New names, new chain codes. Anakin will need new freedom papers, of course.”

“Why?” Ahsoka says, the white lines above her eyes furrowing. “If we’ve got fake identities anyway, doesn’t it not really matter?”

Obi-Wan explains about slave chips with codes and scanners meant to catch runaway slaves, and therefore, the importance of freedom papers with the proper numbers applied to the documentation. “As long as he has them,” he says, “no one should look too deeply into whether or not the name is real.”

“Oh,” Ahsoka says, and shifts, the fabric of her borrowed trousers scratching against the clay floor. “Well. Any idea who we’re supposed to be? I mean, are we all going to pretend to be freed, um, slaves, or?” 

“That would be difficult to explain,” Obi-Wan says, and breathes out in an almost sigh. “Too convenient, I suppose.”

It’s unbelievable that they’re having this macabre conversation while somewhere on Alderaan, a man Padmé always considered a dear friend and his wife coo over  _ her  _ daughter and their good fortune, and an IV feeds her husband on a planet he despises as he lays on a bed dusted with sand. “What do you suggest then?” she asks, and pulls her legs to her chest. The sand drags over her toes when she does, as she wraps her arms around her calves and rests her chin on her knees. 

Shrugging, Obi-Wan says, “I don’t know. The last time I faked my own death and assumed a new identity, it was chosen for me.”

“Was it now?” Padmé says sarcastically, as she shoots a look at the semi-contrite man. “I suppose it would be since your real name was on the invitations for the funeral.” 

In a yelp, Ahsoka says, “Hey,” as she bolts upright, eyes wide, “wasn’t it the Chancellor who, like,  _ demanded  _ help from the Council that led to that fuckery? The Chancellor. The Chancellor who’s also the Sith Lord who was Count Dooku’s master. The Sith Lord in charge of the Separatists. The Separatists and Count Dooku, who were going to kidnap the Chancellor.  _ That  _ time you had to fake your death?”

“Well,” Obi-Wan says, inclining his head to glance at her, “yes, that would be the time,” before his attention drifts again from her to Anakin. “Oh Force, to think about—the number of years I just—that the Council—” He stops, and again, sighs.

Padmé thinks about her own naivety, of her apprenticeship and how Palpatine mentored her in the Legislative Youth Programme. Back then, she idealised him as a model politician, and actively sought his advice throughout her entire tenure as Queen of Naboo. It seemed smart, after his successful help during the blockade. Now, she realises, he engineered that all along. He put their own people in danger without a care, and it was her actions that had given him a position to create a pointless war. Nausea grows in the pit of her stomach, traveling to her throat, threatening to spew out all over Padmé’s nightgown and Beru’s homespun bedding. She thinks about her mother, that night when she called her about her concerns regarding Palpatine’s behaviour towards Anakin, and how Mama said that she always knew there was something wrong with the men when really, they both knew that was bullshit.

“We all were,” she says, weary. Not so long ago, she and Bail and Mon Mothma and the rest of the signatories of the Petition of 2000 thought simple diplomacy would oust him from his overreaching power. “No one saw what he was really doing.” 

“I did,” Ahsoka says, slumping back over her criss-crossed arms as above them, false dawn transitions into true dawn, so the stars in the square cut-out of the sky disappear all at once and the light that cascades through the window flushes a pinkish amber. The light’s changing quality doesn’t improve Anakin’s appearance, which Padmé notes, detached, as Ahsoka goes on, “Kind of. Didn’t get the whole Sith Lord vibe, but you know, but I got that it was weird.”

Frowning, Padmé says, “Right,” before there’s a lapse as each of them try to think of something to move the conversation forward. To the future, which needed to be determined, and not to the past which they couldn’t change. “I suppose I can say I’m from Mandalore. I know enough about the planet to pass. Ahsoka, too. We could be sisters or something.” 

“Yeah, that could work,” Ahsoka says. “Because of the whole foundling thing, right? Then it would make sense that you dragged me along when you got married, even if it is to Tatooine. I can get you up to speed on what happened with Maul and the siege. And Obi-Wan—” She looks to him, eyes narrowed and mouth scrunched in concentration. “You’re Anakin’s dad,” she adds.

“Excuse me?” Obi-Wan says, possibly affronted, though they’re all too exhausted for Padmé to be certain. “Surely I’m not old enough to—”

“I bet on Tatooine you are.”

He doesn’t answer, but presumably, only because that’s true. “What are we going to call ourselves?” she asks, and then says, as a declaration, “Luke remains Luke.” She’d given him that name, in those delirious moments after the birth when exhaustion and pain and effort muddled her thinking into a constant litany of  _ I’m going to die, Ani is going to die, our children will never know us, they need names _ . Hopefully, Bail keeps Leia’s name. Everything happened too quickly for Padmé to demand that as a condition to the separation.

“Of course,” Obi-Wan says. “Luke has no reason to hide. Anakin can likely remain Ani. I can be—Ben.”

Ahsoka laughs, short but startling for its brightness. “Ben,” she says with a sound halfway to a snort. “Are you going with Obi for the rest of it?”

“I wouldn’t dare,” he says, placing a hand over his heart, “though I’m certain Owen wouldn’t mind.”

There’s a wryness in the way he says it that’s all too familiar. “You too, huh?” Padmé asks, with a raised eyebrow as she remembers the last night she waited out on this same homestead. At the time, she’d been shocked and offended. She hadn’t understood Tatooine, and the assumptions that came along with expensive fabrics and someone with a slave name.

“Ah, did they do it to you first, then?” he says, and very nearly manages half a grin.

“Do what?” Ahsoka asks.

Bluntly, Obi-Wan answers, “Assume we own Anakin.”

“What?” Ahsoka asks, twisting to look between the both of them so her back pops from the movement, but before she can continue, Padmé cuts in and says, “They mean well. It’s just the sad fact of life on Tatooine. And Shmi had never heard back from Anakin after he left. To them, it was only natural to assume they’d been lied to about his freedom.” 

“This is Master Qui-Gon’s doing,” Obi-Wan says, pinching his nose between his forefinger and thumb. There’s a russet bloodstain on the back of his tunic that she failed to notice earlier, when the room was darker. “He never thought to mention it to anyone that he hadn’t thought to mention it to Anakin that he won his freedom, not  _ him _ , in that podrace. This could have been avoided, I suspect, if only someone knew that.”

_ I never did care for that man, _ Padmé thinks. She remembered him as rather arrogant and calm, calm to the point of creating counterproductive frustration, and too caught up in himself and his own belief that he knew better the politics of places he only stepped foot on once than the people who lived there all their lives. Of course he didn’t mention to one small slave boy that he was free. 

“Wait a minute,” Ahsoka says as her fingers tangle in the homespun. “What do you mean someone  _ won him in a podrace? _ Does this have to do with the podrace that everyone in the Outer Rim knew about? That podrace? Someone won him?”

Again, neither Padmé nor Obi-Wan answer, each waiting for the other to offer the explanation first. Finally, he says, “It was when he was nine, as you may know,” and tells the story about the blockade and the podrace and, finally, the rescue of a huttlet on Teth that led Anakin back to Tatooine, where he learned at last that he was not, as it happened, a—

“Ani thought what?” Padmé says, and groans, thunking her head back into the wall and focusing her gaze on the ceiling’s painted shapes. After what happened on Zygerrian and during Naboo’s Festival of Lights, she learned about Jabba and the huttlet and that Obi-Wan had to buy his freedom, officially, but Anakin neglected to mention that incident cleared any previous misconceptions he had regarding the state of his personhood. “If I could dig up that man’s ashes and throw them into the depths of the sea to be consumed by an Opee sea killer, I would do it this very minute.” 

“I told the Council,” Obi-Wan says, incensed now, so he gesticulates towards nothing in particular, “because I believed it was pertinent information, and the only two members with any sense of reasonable reaction were Master Plo and Master Shaak. The others asked me how I could ‘justify the cost’ while we were at war. Master Yoda absolved the Council of all blame.”

Though she knows it’s wrong to feel anger at the recent, brutally murdered dead, Padmé can’t bring herself to care much about her intense negativity. She’s not a Jedi; there’s no rule dictating that she release that negativity into the Force. After everything, she finds immense comfort in aiming all her anger towards  _ Yoda, _ whose decision-making skills were unfavourable at the best of times over their entire working acquaintanceship, and a downright disgrace in the last two weeks. 

To the ceiling, she says, “My mother would have some choice words. Ever since the intervention she’s been talking about classes on childhood trauma and working with younglings on Naboo.” 

“I know,” Obi-Wan says, taking her by surprise. “I may have insinuated this to her after the incident with Rako Hardeen. She claimed she would write the Council a letter regarding their behaviour towards younglings. I informed her they would destroy it without reading it, but she was rather insistent.” 

“You’re friends with Padmé’s mom?” Ahsoka says, and turns her head into the mattress to yawn.

This is as unexpected to Padmé as it is to Ahsoka. For the past two years, she assumed her mother held a generally unfavourable opinion of Obi-Wan considering the words “audacious” and “unthinking” that had left her lips when Padmé informed her about his apparent return from the dead. Still, she knows the vigour with which her mother writes strongly worded complaints to everyone from the man who sells freshly picked nuna eggs three doors down at four in the morning, to Pablo the artist who drew her father’s nose wrong on the twenty-fifth anniversary dinner invitations, and even to Darred, everytime he didn’t fix the laundry droid and reminded them of his uselessness, though Sola insisted they were “qualities.” Routinely, Mama bought flimsi for the express purpose of pinning letters on doors. 

Mama would certainly have a letter or two to pin to Yoda’s new door, wherever that will be, Padmé thinks, before she says, “I can be Dormé. The fake name. To honour her and everything she’s done for me.” 

Dormé deserves it. Her family would never know her sacrifice. Even if they did, there wouldn’t be a body for them to bury.

“Do you think I can get away with Soka?” Ahsoka asks, tentative. “I know it’s really close, but so’s Ani, and it’s what Master Plo called me, so. Honour the dead and all, I guess.” 

“It shouldn’t draw too much attention,” Obi-Wan says. “Not out here in the Outer Rim.” 

“Okay,” she says, the corner of her mouth quirking upward. “Then Soka Rex.”

“Dormé Rex?” Padmé says, shuddering. “Suppose I can get away with taking Ani’s name—though it's not usually done. But no one needs to know.” 

“I read that it’s often the tradition of freed slaves to take on the name of cities,” Obi-Wan says, though he doesn’t say where or why he read it. To have this answer so readily, he must have thought about this during the multi-hour silence to have such a concrete idea. “Espa wouldn’t do. Eisley, then.” 

Though Ani would  _ hate  _ carrying the name of a city on Tatooine, he might not live through this to protest the decision. Regardless of what they chose, they’re going to need the papers sooner rather than later, so the faster they come up with identities to give to Beru, the faster they’ll acquire them. Whether they stay or go, speed is a necessity. 

They’re quiet as the sky above the ceiling’s window sharpens and heats, scorching them in the carmine and orange of the Tatooinian sunrise. Just as the second sun burns away the last of the night, Padmé drifts, nodding into an uneasy almost-sleep where she sits against the wall, but jolts into consciousness abruptly when beside her, someone hacks, roughly and painfully. Her eyes snap open at the sound; Ashoka and Obi-Wan call out together, a mix of “Anakin” and “Ani;” in the other room, Luke shrieks. Scrambling, Padmé rightens herself, moving to give her husband space, and for the first time in four days, when she looks down at her husband, he meets her gaze.

**Author's Note:**

> After this, we're both going to write a couple more fics for the Clone Wars probably before actually moving on past this.


End file.
